1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to signal processing, and more particularly to end-to-end hitless protection in packet switched networks.
2. Description of the Related Art
A packet switched network is a good candidate for next generation networks because of its service flexibility and bandwidth efficiency. It is believed that traditional time-division-multiplexing (TDM) services will eventually be transported over packet switched networks using pseudo-wire (PW) in the future. However, telecommunication carriers have very strict requirements for such TDM services, which is usually beyond the capability of a packet switched network. Such limitation slows the pace of migrating dedicated TDM networks to converged packet networks. A packet network has to improve its service availability/reliability and reduce its packet loss rate to enable this transition.